Books in Brief: About Three Bricks Shy of a Load

About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, by Roy Blount Jr. (Little, Brown, 310 pp., $8.95). Politicians, quipped Gene McCarthy, are like football coaches. They must be smart enough to know the game and dumb enough to think that it’s important. Sour grapes may be the last refuge of the loser yet for the multitude who view the blitz, square-out, and the draw as important, Blount’s journal will be a revelation. Assigned to record the 73/74 edition of the Pittsburgh Steelers, he sketches the season when Rooney’s rowdies were expected to jell and didn’t. Blount’s blend of candor, iconoclasm, and bawdy humor provides the flavor of the locker room minus the stench. Considering the genre of jock-lit, that is no small accomplishment.

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Alan L. Miller

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About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, by Roy Blount Jr. (Little, Brown, 310 pp., $8.95). Politicians, quipped Gene McCarthy, are like football coaches. They must be smart enough to know the game and dumb enough to think that it’s important. Sour grapes may be the last refuge of the loser yet for the multitude who view the blitz, square-out, and the draw as important, Blount’s journal will be a revelation. Assigned to record the 73/74 edition of the Pittsburgh Steelers, he sketches the season when Rooney’s rowdies were expected to jell and didn’t. Blount’s blend of candor, iconoclasm, and bawdy humor provides the flavor of the locker room minus the stench. Considering the genre of jock-lit, that is no small accomplishment.